Fashion Friday: Shanna Goes Dress Shopping

by Courtney on March 25, 2011

Happy Fashion Friday!!

I’m mixing things up a bit this week for Fashion Friday, my friends. Rather than always having you see my ideas and opinions on the fashion front, I thought it might be fun to incorporate some of YOUR IDEAS as well!

**If you think you’ve got a great idea for a Fashion Friday guest post, shoot me an email at sweettoothcourtney[@]gmail[.]com!**

Our first Fashion Friday guest post comes from none other than my fellow fashionista, Shanna. She’s here to tell show us all some great tips for finding inexpensive, wedding-season dresses, and let me tell you…she has some adorable ones to share!

Take it away, Shanna!

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Hi Fabulous Sweet Tooth, Sweet Life Readers!

My name is Shanna and I blog over at Shanna, like Banana. And in case you are wondering, I don’t have an abnormal love of bananas, but rather this is my surefire way to get people to say my name correctly. So now that that’s out of the way, nice to meet you

I’m honored that Courtney asked me to post for Fashion Friday. She’s mastered the art of cupcake baking (putting Martha to shame), while still looking faboosh in everything she wears. And did you know that Courtney’s was one of the first blogs that I started reading???

Okay, back to the very serious matter at hand: Fashion. Based on my Shoes-Day Tuesday posts, you’d think I’d post about shoes, but nope, I’m taking a different approach. Originally I had planned to post about how to “Dress without Stress,” but then a more appropriate idea dawned on me:

“Where to go for inexpensive, sassy wedding-season dresses!“

Since turning 28 (a few years ago now — MEEP!), I’ve had multiple weddings to attend each year. And for the hubby and me, that often means mucho dinero is spent on the plane tickets to get to our destination. Since the best part of a wedding is dressing up (err, besides supporting the ones you love ), I’ve become quite adept at finding super cute, trendy dresses on the cheap. Let’s go shopping shall we?

www.Overstock.com: It’s not just for furniture or random crap! Overstock actually carries quite a bit of amazing stuff, including watches, shoes, and jewelry. They also carry a slew of namebrand dresses from Jessica Simpson to Michael Kors. Oh and shipping is only $2.95 — can’t beat that!

H&M: I love that stores like H&M and Forever 21 aren’t just for youngins’ because both carry a bevy of the latest styles at a fraction of the cost. Places like this are great if you want to try something super trendy, but are concerned it may not be in style next season.

www.LuLus.com: I owe finding this gem to Miss Courtney herself! Last summer she was soliciting inputs on some great online dress finds, and mentioned LuLu’s. I was hooked at first click I’ve shopped here twice for dresses and both times went out of my comfort zone by choosing one-shoulder ideas. One word to the wise: these dresses run short! And I’m only a little over 5’4″.

Purchased from: Lulus.comBrand: Lulu’s Bat Your Lashes, in blushPrice: $32Occasion: Friend’s wedding in KauaiFriend’s Closets: Never underestimate the power of doing some good ol’ closet shopping! Lucky for me, I have a few friends with pricier tastes that wear the same dress size as me. In my experience, I love to see clothes have another chance out on the town, particularly dresses. My friends were more than happy to open up their closets to me and I came out with two beauties that I didn’t have to break the bank for. Talk about a win-win situation

Where do you buy your dresses? If you have a great go-to website or store, please share!

Fashion Do or Don’t? Wearing white to a wedding (when you’re not the bride!). I say it’s more of a Don’t than a Do, unless of course you’ve cleared it with the Bride. As for wearing black, totally fine, especially for late afternoon / evening weddings.

RentTheRunway.com! You rent designer dresses for $50-200+ depending on the designer. You can order 2 sizes to make sure it fits, it comes perfectly dry cleaned in a garment bag with a postage paid envelope to send it back in the day after your event. They have accessories, as well. It’s perfect for me who always wants a new dress for every event, and hates wearing the same thing twice

Bridesmaid dresses double great as dresses for weddings as a guest! A lot of bridal shops have cute, fun and flirty little dress options now for bridesmaids and a lot of the time you can get them pretty inexpensively, they are ordered to size, and you can usually choose color & fabric and can always add options yourself to make it stand out. Just make sure you know where the bride had her girls get their dresses and what color they are so you don’t look like you’re part of the bridal party!

I’m all for bargain shopping too and I try very hard not to purchase something that is full price.

I love shopping at Nordstrom Rack and all the online stores mentioned above.

Recently, most of my clothes (except work clothes) have been purchased thru sample sales. If you haven’t gone to a sample sale, you should at least try to do it once. I found $80-$100 dresses for $8. BUT you have to be a smart shopper to get the right stuff because most of the good stuff are gone an hour after you walk in the store.

I did a post of my fave dresses….majority of them were from Arden B’s sample sale.

Love all of these! You look great in all of them! I recently discovered mjrsales.com. It’s basically an outlet for Victoria’s Secret online and the discounts are seriously deep. I got 3 (more casual) summer dresses on clearance for $35 with shipping! They have a ton of styles, so I’m sure you could find something wedding-worthy there!

Great post Shanna! I love your style, so hot and chic That dress you wore in Kauai is so simple but it looks so gorgeous on you. I love buying dresses from Macy’s, they have such a pretty selectionJenny (Fit Girl Foodie) recently posted..Battle Of The Oats

Great post, Shanna! I need to go shopping with you! I’ve also found great dresses at the outlet mall, and in particular, at the BCBG outlet. Dresses that are normally hundreds of dollars are ridiculously marked down to <$100. Thanks for all the info!Parita @ myinnershakti recently posted..Out and About

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Welcome to Sweet Tooth, Sweet Life! I'm Courtney, a 30-year old wife, new mama to Lucas, NASM certified personal trainer, and newbie to the corporate world living in Upstate, NY. To find out a little bit more about the girl behind the blog, check out my My Story page!